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DANIEL WEBSTER. 

On the Receiving of the Statues of Webster and Stark. 



SPEECH 



OP 



Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, 



OF" XIASSACHUSHiXXS, 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



December 20, 1894. 



WASHINGTON. 
1894. 






< 

V 



6Gf)4 



Daniel Webster. 



SPEECH 

OF 

HON. GEORGE E. HOAE, 

of massachusetts, 
In the Senate of the United States, 

Thursday, December SO, 1894, 
On the receiving of the statues of Webster and Stark. 

Mr. HOAR said: 

Mr. President: There are few faithful portraits of human faces 
or faithful representations of human figures which take their place 
by the side of the ideal creations of art, such as the Jove of 
Phidias, or the Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus of Melos, as exam- 
ples of consummate beauty, or as expressing great moral qualities, 
or as types of nations or races. The face of George Washington, 
misrepresented by Stuart; the portrait of the yoiing Augustus, where 
in the innocent face of unstainedyouth appears already the promise 
of an imperial cliaracter; some Greek and Roman busts; some 
representatieas of the youthful Napoleon; the head of Alexander 
Humboldt; the glorious forehead of Coleridge; the lips of Julius 
•Caesar — are almost the only examples that I now recall. The figure 
and head of Daniel Webster I think we shall all agree to include 
in the same list. 

No man ever looked upon him and forgot him. His stately per- 
sonal ijresence was the chief ornament of Boston and of Washing- 
ton for a generation. When he walked, a stranger, through the 
streets of London, the draymen turned to gaze after him as he 
pcissed. Sidney Smith said of him, "He is a cathedral by him- 
self;" and at another time, in homelier phrase, "A steam engine 
in breeches." Carlyle wrote to Emerson of him: 

The tanned complexion; that amorphoiis, crag-like face; the dull black eyes 
under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to bo 
* blown: the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; I have not traced so much of 
silent Berserkir rage that I remember of in any man. 

The qualities of one of the greatest races of men which the 
world has seen in its greatest age and fullest development appeared 
in that majestic countenance and looked out in the gaze of those 
magnificent eyes. Command, courage, steadfastness, intellect, the 
IV pose of conscious strength, the capacity for tenderness or for 
burning i^assion, are all there. 

2 1703 



3 

Mr. Webster's family, as is the case with very many of our emi- 
nent men, both living and dead, is of Scotch origin, though they 
dwelt for some time in England before they came to this country. 
That element, whether it came originally from Scotland itself, or 
indirectly from Ireland or England, has contributed some of the 
best citizens to New England, as to other parts of the country. 
The shrewd sense, the active intellect, the undaunted persever- 
ance, the indomitable courage, the deep religious faith, the ten- 
derness of family affection, the stanch patriotism for which the 
Scotch are so distinguished, have never sutfered in the trans- 
planting. Wherever an\'thing good is to be had or to be done m 
this country, you are apt to tind a Scotchman on the front seat 
tr>ang to see ii he can get it ar do it. 

He touched New England at every point. He was born a 
frontiersman. He tells us that when the smoke rose from hia 
father's chimney, there was no similar evidence of a white man a 
habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. 
He was bred a farmer. He knew well the history of the growth 
of every crop, the chemistry of the soil, the procession of the 
seasons. He knew, too, the simple and tender history of the country 
fireside, and what the farmer was thinking of as he gtuded his 
plow in the furrow in April or pitched the hay into the cart m 
midsummer. He was a fisherman in the mountain brooks and off 
the shore. He never forgot his origin, and he never was ashamed 
of it. Amid all the care and honor of his great place here he was 
homesick for the companv of his old neighbors and friends. 
Whether he stood in Washington, the unchallenged prince and 
chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the kingliest man of his, 
time in the presence of kings, his heart was m New England. 
When the spring came he heard far off the fife bird and the bobo- | 
link calling him to his New Ham])shire mountains, or the plash- ; 
ing of the waves on the shtn-e at Marslifield alluring hira with a. 
sweeter than siren's voice to Ids home by the summer sea. 

That Mr. Webster w^s the foremost American lawyer of hisf 
time, as well in the capacity to conduct jury trials as to argue 
questions of law before the full court, will not, I think, be seriously 
questioned by anybody who has read the reports of his legal argu- 
ments, or who has studied the history of his encounters before 
juries ^^^th antagonists like Choate or Pinckney. 

That he was foremost in that field which is almost peculiar to 
this country, where the orator utters the emotions of the people 
on great occasions of joy or sorrow, or of national pride, the 
reader of the orations at Plymouth Rock and on the occasion of 
the foundation and completion of the monument at Bunker Hill, 
the eulogies on Adams and Jefferson, on Story and Mason, will 
not question. There has been nothing of the kind to surpass 
them or to equal them since the funeral oration of Pericles. 

That he was a great diplomatist, able to conduct difficult nego- 
tiations to successful issue or to debate with the representatives 
of foreign governments questions in dispute between nations, was 
abundantly shown in his brief terms of service in the Department 
of State. 

But the place of his achievement and renown was here in the \ 
Senate Chamber. He was every inch a Senator— an American 
Senator. He needed no robe, no gilded chair, no pageant, no cere- / 

1702 



Anony, no fasces, no herald making proclamation to add to the 
/dignity and to the authority with which his majestic presence, his 
/ consummate reason, his weighty eloquence, his lofty bearing in- 
l^vested the Senatorial character. His statue will stand in yonder 
chamber to be the first object of admiration to every visitor for 
centuries to come. But no work of art can do justice to the image 
of Webster which dwells in the hearts of his countr\^nen and 
there shall abide when the walls of this Capitol shall have 
crumbled and the columns of the Memorial Hall shall lie pros- 
trate. That image will abide, one and inseparable, with the 
Union which he defended and the liberty which he loved. 

I do not think Mr. Webster's style is maintained at its highest 
excellence throughout his speeches, as they come down to us in 
print. The thought is never tame or mean. You never doubt 
that a great mind is at work. But it often seems to be working 
sluggishly. The expression sometimes seems that of a man half 
asleep. This may largely be due to the imperfection of reporting. 
His masterpieces of English are a few passages where his faculties 
seem to have been at a white heat. It is a common mistake to speak 
of Mr. Webster's as a nervous Saxon style. Except in a few sen- 
tences, the characteristic of Mr. Webster's style is a somewhat pon- 
derous Latinity. There is more of Dr. Johnson than of Shakespeare 
in it. I think that for his purposes he was discreet in the choice of 
a vehicle for his thoughts, for which the resources of that part of 
our language which is of Saxon origin would often have been in- 
adequate. 

The Saxon is tough, sinewy, racy. It is the fittest speech for 
common life. It is not without resources for the utterance of 
lofty emotion, as witness many passages in the Bible Avhich we 
know by heart. But still there is something lacking in it. When 
the intellect would express its profoundest meaning, or clothe 
itself in state or splendor, it seeks in the Latin what it does not 
find elsewhere. If we were to endow the animals with the gift of 
speech, we should give the Saxon to the otter, to the ferret, to the 
bull dog, and even to the eagle. But I think we would need 
something else for the lion. Indeed, in Campbell's matchless 
couplet, even in describing the eagle's flight, with what a fine in- 
stinct he touches both chords. The Saxon will do for the swift 
flight, like a bullet to its mark. But the lofty, unapproachable 
solitude must be described in the majestic Latin: 

Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding he rode, 
Compauionless, bearing destruction abroad. 

The Saxon is a safe tongue for persons who are in danger of 
spoiling their English style by the use of little pomposities. The 
attempt to give dignity to a mean or common thought, or to a 
thought which should be uttered simply, directly, and plainly, by 
clothing it in a certain affected stateliness of phrase, is the ^ruin 
of many writers and of more speakers. The Saxon is not likely 
to be used by a writer who has no thought at all. 

But on every occasion he knew liow to convev his weighty mean- 
ing to any tribunal he had to address, whether court or Senate, 
alike to the understanding of the people and the apprehension of 
any antagonist. Thegi-andeur of Mr. Webster's speech was alwaA's 
mingled with moral tenderness and beauty. But his passion is a 
restrained and contained passion. He belonged to a race, he spako 



ir(i-3 



to auditors of a race, not in the habit of uncovering the springs of 
emotion to everv observer. The few incidents where he gave way 
and seemed to have lost command of himself in deep personal 
feeling, as in liis Dartmouth College argument, are handed dow^n 
to us by tradition onlv. He did not prepare them beforehand, and 
he has left no record of them himself. There is in all Mr. Web- 
ster's speeches the appearance of reserved power, of avoidance of 
extremes, which adds so much to their impressiveness. 
Half his strength he put not forth. 

It was said of him by a gi-eat philosopher of New England, the 
only man of his time whose influence as a great public teacher 
equaled his own: 

His weight was like the falling of a planet, his discretion the return of its 
due and perfect curve. 

He was not more distinguished from other public speakers by his 
severe reason, his sound sense, and his lofty eloquence than by 
his moderation and restraint. He was master of every emotion 
but one— love of country. That alone he allowed to obtain mas- 
tery of him. 

It was hard for him to argue the wrong side. His genius was 
less the genius of the advocate than of the judge. His style was 
the fit vehicle for truth onlv. His clear logic could never be at 
the command of error. Calhoun, in his dying hours, said, when 
Mr. Webster's name was mentioned to him: 

Mr. Webster has as high a standard of truth as any statesman I have met 
in debate. Convince him, and he can not reply; he is silenced; he can not 
look truth in the face and oppose it by argiiment. I think that it could be 
readUy perceived when he felt the force of an unanswerable reply. 

/" It is scarcely too much to say that Daniel Webster first taught 
/Jiis country her ovn\ greatness" There can be found no utterance 
of his, whether he speak of his country or in behalf of his coun- 
try, which is not in a manner befitting a first-class power among 
the nations of the world. There is no vanity or pettiness or boast- 
ing. There is no deference or beseeching in his tone. The con- 
trast in this particular between Mr. Webster's state papers and 
many of those that preceded his time and some, I am sorry to say, 
of a time later than his is quite marked. This lofty and dignified 
tone marks all his speeches from his first entrance upon public 
view. No Englishman, no Greek, no Roman ever felt a loftier 
pride in the character of his country, in his country's proudest 
dav. than Daniel Webster felt in his. 

, From the time of his first public speech which arrested the atten- 
tion of his countr^-men until to-dav. his speeches are the literature 
1 of American nationalitv. No other orator or statesman divides 
I with him this honor. Mothers teach their children the love of 
^country in his words. The schoolboy knows them by heart. On 
every patriotic anniversarv the orators repeat them. They are 
inscribed on the walls of banquet halls and on triumphal banners. 
They wiU never be forgotten. Thev are to the American what the 
Psalms of David were to the Hebrew, what the songs of Burns 
are to the Scotchman. 

If Mr. Webster had died when General Taylor was nominated for 

the Presidency in 1848 he would have gone down in our history 

as its chief historical figure, save Washington and Lincoln alone. 

The estimate in which the people of New England would have 

1703 



6 

held him would, I think, have been accepted by the whole country, 
and would have scarcely fallen short of idolatry. There would 
have been perhaps a little complaint that in his last years he had 
been slow and unready in taking his place as the foremost leader 
and champion of liberty and in marshaling her liosts for the great 
striTggle for dominion over the vast territory between the Missis- 
sippi and the Pacific. But the judgment of the countrj^ would 
have been that such hesitation was only the deliberation due to 
the gravity of the question and the importance of his own rela- 
tion to it. 

Until the 7th of March, 1850, he was the oracle of New Eng- 
land. His portrait was upon the farmers' walls. He seemed to 
dwell at every fireside, not so much a guest, as at home, in an 
almost bodily presence, mingling with every discussion where the 
power, the giory, or the autliority of the country was in question. 
Before 1850 Daniel Webster had never come off defeated from any 
intellectual encounter or lowered his spear before any antagonist. 
In the strifes of party politics his side had often been defeated. 
But his arguments of fundamental questions had sunk deep into 
the heart and had convinced the reason of the vast majority of 
his countrymen of all parties. 

But in 1850, for the first time, he encountered quite another 
antagonist. He put himself in opposition to the conscience of the 
North. The voice of law, as he interpreted it, and the voice of 
God, speaking to the individual soul, for the first time in our na- 
tional history seemed to be in conflict. I suppose the time has 
not yet come for a sound and dispassionate judgment of Mr. Web- 
ster's motives in choosing his side. It is possible that, like so 
many other and ordinary men, he hardly knew them himself. A 
man conscious of great powers, the object of a worship amount- 
ing almost to idolatry, not merely from common men but from the 
ablest, wisest, and most illustrious of his contemporaries, know- 
ing well his own fitness for the highest public service, and know- 
ing also his own purpose to employ supreme power, if intrusted 
with it, solely for the public advantage, can hardly measure the 
influence of ambition as afi:ecting his judgment. 

Mr. Webster was doubtless sincere when he stated his appre- 
hension of a dissolution of the Union and of the vast mischief to 
hiamanity if that dissolution should be accomplished. Subseqr.ent 
events and calmer reflection have shown that in this respect it 
was he, and not his opponents, who was right. But no language 
can fitly describe the condition of mind with which the report of 
Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, 1850, was heard. Noth- 
ing could have resisted the dominion of Daniel Webster over New 
England until he provoked an encounter with the inexorable 
conscience of the Puritan. The shock of amazement, of con- 
sternation, and of grief which went through the North has had 
no parallel save that which attended the assassination of Lincoln. 
Is it you, Daniel Webster, that are giving iis this counsel? _ Do 
you tell us that when the fugitive slave girl lays her suppliant 
hands on the horns of the altar, that it is oiir duty to send her 
back to be scourged, to be outraged, to be denied the right to read 
her Bible, to be the mother of a progeny for whom, for count- 
less generations, these things shall be the connnon and relentless 
doom? Is it you, the orator of Plymouth Rock, of Bunker Hill, 
1702 



•7 

defender of the Constitution, from whose volcanic lips came those 
words of molten lava. '• Lilaerty and Union, now and forever, one 
and inseparable"'? Has the intellect that wrought out the mas- 
sive logic of the reply to Hayne descended to this pitiful argu- 
ment? 
Do we — 

Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him 
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves? 

Is it slavery and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable? 
Do you, who erected in imperishable granite the eternal monument 
of Nathan Dane, amcyig the massive columns of your great argu- 
ment, tell us now that natural conditions are to determine the 
question of slavery, and that an ordinance of freedom is an affront 
to the South, and that we must not reenact the law of God? Is 
the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific to be 
left to its fate? Do you. who came to the side of Andrew Jackson 
in 1832, counsel that the lawful authority of this nation shall yield 
to the threats of revolution and secession? Is it from you that we 
hear that there is no higher law? Even if you are right m yoiir 
interpretation of the Constitution, when did you discover that it 
was greater than the law of God? . 

Were not the mandates of Laud, which the Puritans resisted 
and from which they fled, founded upon English law? Was not the 
revocation of the edict of Nantes from the same lawful authority 
as that which enacted it? Were not the doings of St. Bartholo- 
mew's Eve by command of a lawful king? Did not the Enghsh 
judges determine the question of the right to impose ship money 
in the King's favor? Were Hampden and Russell mere traitors 
and agitators? Your doctrine condemns in one breath the cham- 
pions and the martyrs of English liberty and of our own. 

Mr. Webster, for the first time in his life, failed to comprehend 
the temper of the people among whom he was born and bred. He 
met this expostulation with arrogance and contempt. It was 
perhaps not unnatural. He was grov/ing old. He had been ted on 
adulation. He had found no antagonists fit to cope with him, or 
who dared to cope with him. He had failed — 

Onlv when he tried 

The adamant of the righteous side. 

He had an old man's dread of a new order of things. He had a 
not ungenerous ambition. He was right in his estimate of public 
danger" His constitutional arguments remained unanswered. 

Webster died wliile the storm of this mighty conflict was still 
raging. He was disappointed in the hope that it would be given to 
him to compose it. The compromises which he had hoped would 
settle forever the questions growing out of slavery were never ob- 
served by either side. In the national convention of his own party, 
as its candidate for the Presidency in 1853, out of 293 votes he 
received but 30. He counseled his friends to cast their votes tor 
the candidate of the Democracy, and went home to Marshfield to 
die prematurely, and — 

Foiled in aim and hope, bereaved 

Of old friends, by the new deceived, 

Beside the lonely Northern sea, 

Where long and low the marsh lands spread, 

Laid wearily down his august head. 

iro2 



8 

It would have been fortunate for Mr. Webster's happiness and 
for his fame if he had died before 1850. Bnt what would have 
been his fame and what would have been his happiness if his life 
could have been spared till 18(15? He would have seen the tran- 
scendent issue on which the fate of the country hung made up as 
he had framed it in 1830. Union and liberty, the law of man and 
the law of God, the Constitution and natiiral justice, the aiigust 
voice of patriotism and the august voices of the men who settled the 
country and of the men who framed the Constitution are all speak- 
ing on the same side. He would have lived to see the time for con- 
cession all gone by; the flag falling from Sumter's walls caught as it 
fell liy the splendid youth of 1861 ; the armed hosts pressing upon the 
Capitol beaten back, everj-thing which he had loved, everything 
wLich he had worked for in the prime of his years and in the strength 
of his manhood, ralhnng upon one side — patriotism, national au- 
thority, law, conscience, duty, all speaking together and all speak- 
ing through his lips and repeating his maxims. He would have 
seen his great arguments in the reply to Hayne, in the debates 
with Calhoun, inspiring, guiding, commanding, strengthening. 
The judge in the court is citing them. The orator in the Senate 
is repeating them. The soldier by the camp fire is meditating 
them. The Union cannon is shotted with them. They are 
flashing from the muzzle of the rifle. They are gleaming in 
the stroke of the saber. They are heard in the roar of the artil- 
lery. They shine on the advancing banner. They mingle with 
the shoiit of victory. They conquer in the surrender of Appo- 
mattox. They abide forever and forever in the returning reason 
of an estranged section and the returning loj-alty of a united 
people. Oh, if he could but have lived — if he could but have lived, 
how the hearts of his countrymtrii would have come back to him! 

What will be the final verdict of mankind upon the last three 
years of the life of Daniel Webster it would be arrogance and pre- 
sumption here to declare. But whether, as manj^ men think, they 
will be held to have been but another instance of human frailty, 
giving way before a supreme temptation, to be pitied, to be par- 
doned, to be forgotten; or whether those years Avill be held to have 
been years of a supreme and noble sacrifice of self to patriotism and 
for the safety of the country — it is too early, although nearly half 
a century has gone by, to pronounce with confidence. May none 
of us in our humbler public career be subjected to such a test or be 
brought to the bar of history to receive its sentence after such a 
trial. 

The bitterest enemy, the most austere judge, must grant to Dan- 
iel Webster a place with the great intellects of the world. He was 
among the greatest. Of all the men who have rendered great serv- 
ices to America and to the cause of constitiitional liberty, there 
are Init two or three names worthy to be placed by the side of his. 
Of all the lovers of his country, no man ever loved her with a 
greater love. In all the attributes of a mighty and splendid man- 
hood he never had a superior on earth. Master of English speech, 
master of the loftiest emotions that stirred the hearts of his couu; 
trymen, comprehending better than any other man^^save Marshall) 
the principles of lier Constitution, he is tlie one foremost figure ill 
our history between the day when Washington died and the day 
when Lincoln took the oath of office. 
1702 

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